As energy usage in Texas reaches an all-time high, UTRGV encourages the campus community to conserve energy to avoid rolling blackouts, and provides tips on how to do so.
UTRGV’s Office of the Executive Vice President for Finance & Administration has sent a campuswide email that includes tips provided by the Office of the Governor on how to conserve energy.
“The Office of the Governor reminds us that due to our state’s steadily growing population and a robust economy, electricity usage in Texas has been at an all-time high,” the Sept. 6 email states. “While we expect to have a few more days of high temperatures, we would like to remind our university community to conserve as much energy as possible.”
UTRGV spends about $7 million a year in consumption of electricity, which is paid from the university’s Designated Funds account, according to Marta Salinas-Hovar, associate vice president for Facilities Planning & Operations.
The Brownsville Public Utilities Board (BPUB) is the electrical energy provider for the UTRGV Brownsville campus and EDF Energy Services for the Edinburg campus.
Salinas-Hovar said the campus community can help conserve energy by following what was suggested in the email.
“To be mindful about turning off the lights, you know, in their workspaces, classrooms, offices, whatever type of space they’re in,” she said. “More importantly, it’s to develop energy conservation habits so we’re always conscious of those things.”
Salinas-Hovar also said if the university is not conscious about conserving energy, it can put a burden on the energy grid and can result in rolling blackouts.
Rolling blackouts are used by electric utility companies to avoid a total blackout of the power system.
“We want to avoid rolling blackouts because it’s not something they coordinate with all the residents or everybody in general,” Salinas-Hovar said. “They do them because they feel like they have to do them, and then the power will just go out. What we do then is, we instead are proactive, and we participate in [a Demand Response Event] and the Demand Response Event is something we coordinate with them and they ask us within a four-month period. We participate sometimes once or sometimes maybe twice.”
A Demand Response Event controls demand on the electric grid during peak hours and is only conducted on the Edinburg campus.
“Peak load is when the campus is seeing the highest power demand,” said David Ortega, UTRGV assistant director for energy and cooling plant. “There’s many participating companies, but by setting the load, we are able to contribute to help the whole grid and to prevent rolling blackouts or to minimize them when they do happen.”
UTRGV participated in two Demand Response Events during the first week of September.
Salinas-Hovar told The Rider in an email that BPUB does not conduct Demand Response Events, and that is why the Brownsville campus does not participate in them.
Ortega said the university wants to avoid canceling classes due to blackouts.
“Without power, we would cancel classes, research would be interrupted and maybe altered, and there’s a lot of equipment out there,” he said, “expensive equipment that needs to be air-conditioned, so there’s several impacts of not having power.”
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